Econ Paper

The engine of globalization in east Asia is an all too powerful motor, churning with not only the capacity to drive the region safely into the next century, but all too full of enough fuel to burn down more sustainable future than East Asian immolation. The most dangerous drawback of the endless march of East Asia’s made example of modernization theory? According to the United Nations, the answer is money itself. That when there are “…economic shocks that are outside of their control, such as a rapid decline in the price of their major export, changes in interest rates on international capital markets or reduced access to credit” (United Nations, 1999, para. 38), and fiscal disasters involving middle-income nation states.

These disasters then outline financial shockwaves in poorer neighboring countries, both near that government/market’s borders and far from. In some measure, a result of depressions effecting these markets leads invariably to an economically wounding these less developed countries’ exports. In East Asia in the 1990’s and example of the U.N’s aforementioned assertion on shockwave effect economic depression, in both the country of Cambodia as well as the lesser-known Lao People’s Democratic Republic, commonly grieved for depressed economies associated to the East Asian money crises which effected Korea, Thailand, and Indonesia most notably.

All of these downturns appeared to condemn Cambodia and Lao People’s Democratic Republic, already like the poorest countries in East Asia, to disaster. The route in which this disastrous meltdown in the banking systems of East Asia had to be traced back to the source, and doing so was not only quite simple, but quite simply a crystal clear example of one of the more deleterious side-effects of the engine of globalization in East Asia, inter-connectivity breeds mutual disintegration during ‘engine’ meltdown. With Lao currency coincidentally linked to the Thai bhat, and thus Thailand’s market downturn, Lao currency fell over seventy percent against the U.S dollar in the timeframe bridging July 1997 and June of the following year. The resultant upswing in price increases concentrating sharp declination in real incomes and purchasing power, particularly amongst the poorest of the populace (Okonjo-Iweala and others, 1999, p. 49).

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS), which performed a directing role in the debt reforms in the Latin Americas during the financial crises experienced in those countries in the early 1980’s, as well as the East Asia Recession of the 1990’s, were similarly the entity acting as the mediator of the round table discussions between the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision that comprised bank supervisors from the Group of Ten industrialized countries involved. To give a bit of background to this, in 1988, the Basel Committee granted a system for gauging capital sustainability and demarcated a least amount of capital as set standard to meet to function as an internationally active bank. Centered on conferences that comprised administrators from numerous emerging countries, the Basel Committee advanced endorsements connected to finance issues concluding with the 1997 published work: ‘Core Principles for Effective Banking Supervision’ (see United Nations, 2001a, p. 145). It is emerging and aisle-crossing economics that define the success of globalization, for good or for ill. By the nature of the word itself, globalization is a unity, a one global commonality. Money, trade, and the technology that makes the world small enough to easily communicate from separate hemisphere, the U.N, let alone the banking systems of the world/East Asia are far from perfect, and corruption is ever-present, yet, there are those who believe in reform, the Basel Committee, as stated, is certainly achieving that reform through a globalized sense of responsibility.

Many social scientists can be found to have publically associated East Asian globalizations with the presence of the ‘Western Powers’ that of the U.S and what is now called the European Union. To accomplish this, England, France, and the United States can be found both now and historically having significant economic and military influence in East Asia. With the United States clearly having an ever present estate in Guam, let alone influence in Philippines, to a sense of similarly pompously entitled types of bad habits. Practices that though once strictly required violence, the industrial age had made bloodshed less traumatic than economic grip through Clientalism.

The western influence that has both helped to be what defines as well as occasionally slows East Asian globalization is this concept: Clientalism. A concept that to many political and social scientists, such that it should be recognized as something very separate from corruption. The idea being that all too often the relationship between the voters and those in political seats of power are never solely linked through such corruption association made when the word Clientalism is used, because it is to mold a country’s markets, including its media, and has historically been a veritable banquet for the ever-hungry propagandists of the western world. The flipside: The definite amount of responsibility and transparency in a clientelistic system is made apparent in the political figures need to appease their support and demographics, and historically this is never done in politics, however, without pleasing to appease.

To foster a familiarity of this term, Clientalism refers to a “Mother” economy and its factions influencing via umbilicus an entirely economically dependent poorer country whose exports and currency are mostly/entirely doomed to economic disaster if that states “mother” country tumbles into recession. Clientalism in its more predatory and corrupt forms appear most noticeably in countries which during the age of Empires was part of this “mother” country. An unconventional approach of understanding Clientalism is that it is an initial form of representative organization, one that is nearly entirely accomplished in somewhat poor countries that hold consistent elections.

France, as much the Empire worldwide as England, Spain, or arguably the United States and the United Kingdom are today, retains more than just memories of a dynastic past. The United States was embroiled in a war in Vietnam only after France failed to keep that country, one of France’s colonies from the old days of the Empire, from shifting politically toward the Soviet regime. An historical example of Clientalism and the social aggregation that led to Khmer Rouge and bloody war in Vietnam and not unlike France’s re-insertion into its former colony in North Africa, in what is now called Mali, in an excursion only as recent as the past twelve months.

In the aforementioned Mali and Vietnam, we examine some of France’s former and current interests. Other examples of France’s former empires clientelistic grasp on East Asia include Cambodia, Laos, and even the Paracel Islands which, now called the Xīshā Islands, are a formerly French controlled part of what is now islands part of the People’s Republic of China. In most of the countries that comprise the East Asian engine of churning globalization, such as China, the political demands of individuals and groups are pooled into policy platforms where many political parties may be present, yet regularly only one party, (such as in China), sometimes as much as two are present. However, despite that East Asian politics in regard to China, a leading figure in East Asian globalization in their recent massive growth and world outreach, a structure in which power never alternates seems to be in place politically. It is interesting to note that with China, is it possible that the cultural identity of populace has become the culture of communism? Perhaps the sheer amount of time since the last emperor sat upon the throne behind the gates of the Forbidden City has disassociated any cultural association toward a monarchy. Yet that engine of globalization, that ever expanding realm of opportunities and growth for a world community is re-enforced in this Time Magazine article from January 9th, 2012, entitled “The U.S. Military Eyes the Asia-Pacific. China’s Response? So Far, A Shrug”. It reads:

“When U.S. President Barack Obama announced earlier this month that the U.S. military would be re-orienting itself toward the Asia-Pacific—a move that many perceive as an attempt to counter China’s rising power—Still, the headline’s positive spin—and the absence of pages more of aggrieved Chinese commentary in the following days—was telling. Here’s more from the Xinhua piece: “The US role, if fulfilled with a positive attitude and free from a Cold War-style zero-sum mentality, will not only be conducive to regional stability and prosperity, but be good for China, which needs a peaceful environment to continue its economic development” (Beech 2012).

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5-Beech, Hannah. "China Shrugs Off America's 'Pivot' to Asia—For Now | TIME.com." World | International Headlines, Stories, Photos and Video | TIME.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Apr. 2013. <http://world.time.com/2012/01/09/the-u-s-military-eyes-the-asia-pacific-chinas-response-so-far-a-shrug/>.

6-Mahr, Krista. "Okinawa Troop Withdrawal: Why the U.S. and Japan Have a Lot More Talking to Do | TIME.com." World | International Headlines, Stories, Photos and Video | TIME.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Apr. 2013. <http://world.time.com/2012/04/27/okinawa-troop-withdrawal-why-the-u-s-and-japan-have-a-lot-more-talking-to-do/>.